Chapter 2: The Child Who Wasn't Afraid
The forty-eighth space was created in a region Shuun-Vo had never visited before. It was a small village, on the outskirts of a minor Cognitive Citadel, where the inhabitants cultivated luminescent fungi and raised small symbiotic animals.
Shuun-Vo chose an alley between two abandoned houses. The walls were common mineral stone, without living structures. The floor was beaten earth. There was nothing special about the place, except for the fact that no one used it.
He spent three days preparing the space.
It wasn't a visible process. Shuun-Vo didn't build anything, he removed. He removed the system's pressure. He removed the expectation that something should happen there. He removed the feeling that the place belonged to someone or to some function.
When he finished, he sat on the stone that served as a seat and waited.
It was always like this. He created the space and then waited to see if anyone would find it. If anyone would understand, without needing an explanation, that it was a place to do nothing.
On the second day, a child appeared.
She was a girl, maybe six cycles old. She had dark hair and an auditory symbiote curled around her ear like a small snail. She stopped at the entrance of the alley and looked at Shuun-Vo with big, curious eyes.
- "Are you the man who doesn't talk? - she asked."
Shuun-Vo didn't answer. He didn't usually answer children. Children were afraid of him, of his body covered in plates, his presence that nullified symbiosis, his silence that seemed like a denial of the world.
But this child wasn't afraid.
- "My grandmother said there's a man who doesn't talk, but the places where he sits get quieter - the girl continued." - "She said it's good for when you're sad."
Shuun-Vo tilted his head. Someone was talking about him. Someone understood what he did.
- "Are you sad? - he asked, his voice rough."
The girl shook her head.
- "No. But my grandmother is. Her symbiote died yesterday. She won't stop crying."
Shuun-Vo was silent. He didn't know what to say to a child whose grandmother had lost a symbiote. He was the Rejected Presence. His mere existence nullified symbiosis. How could he comfort someone who suffered from exactly what he represented?
- "Bring your grandmother here - he said, finally."
The girl smiled and ran off.
Shuun-Vo sat, hands resting on his knees, plates glowing faintly. The moss in the corner, a different moss from the first, but equally persistent that seemed to watch him.
- "Don't say anything - Shuun-Vo murmured to the moss."
The grandmother arrived an hour later, dragged by her granddaughter. She was an elderly woman, her face marked by wrinkles and her eyes red from crying. When she saw Shuun-Vo, she hesitated.
- "I... I don't know if I should..."
- "Sit - said Shuun-Vo."
She sat. The granddaughter sat beside her. Shuun-Vo said nothing more.
The silence of the space enveloped the three figures like a blanket. The woman stopped crying. The girl rested her head on her grandmother's shoulder. Shuun-Vo remained motionless, his plates glowing in a slow, steady rhythm.
No one spoke.
But when the woman rose to leave, she touched Shuun-Vo's shoulder. It was a quick touch, almost hesitant. But it was a touch.
- "Thank you - she said."
Shuun-Vo didn't answer. But when the woman and child left, he looked at the moss in the corner.
- "Maybe - he murmured." - "I'm good for something."